Curried Chicken Salad

Thursday night found me consumed with an overwhelming desire to make mayonnaise. This is strange, even for me, because I have a real aversion to raw eggs. Caesar salad dressing kinda scares me, I won't eat raw cookie dough so it is totally bizarre for me to want to make something based entirely on uncooked eggs. I'm not really sure how or why this happened but it was a fun, educational experience.

I am using the recipe from Staff Meals From Chanterelle. I continue to recommend this book for the multitude of delicious, well-written recipes.

Oil, eggs, curry powder, mustard and lemon juice.

6 tablespoons of oil, 2 tablespoons of Madras-style curry powder:
Just gently heat it for a few minutes. It should be nicely fragrant. Allow this to cool to room temperature.

4 egg yolks, 3 tablespoons of lemon juice, 2 teaspoons of mustard:
Blend it and it will become lighter and somewhat frothy.

With the blender on, slowly drizzle in 1.5 cups of oil. Then drizzle in the curry infused oil (with the curry powder.) It should emulsify into a thick and creamy mayonnaise!
Season with salt.

Ideally, this is what would happen but let me alert you to some of the pitfalls that may come your way. First, like me, you might be an impatient ass and don't let the curry oil fully cool. Second, your blender sucks so, after the initial 1.5 cups of oil, it stops blending. The blade keeps whirring but the mayonnaise doesn't move! Both of these problems generate heat in the mayonnaise which, because you're using raw egg yolks, probably leads to some sort of food sanitation issue. I think the easiest way to alleviate the gimp blender problem is to make a half batch.

How's the final product? It is, for my taste, slightly too stiff. I like a more dip-able, loose mayonnaise so I guess I have a few options--fewer egg yolks, less oil or maybe the addition of water? I'm a mayo noob so I don't quite know which to choose.

So what do you do with two cups of curry mayo? Chicken salad, I think. This is super easy.

I purchased three chicken hind-quarters (the thigh/drumstick combo) at the local Asian supermarket. Poach the legs in salted water. This took me 45 minutes at a slow, languid simmer. Allow the legs to cool to room temp. Pick the meat off of the bones with your fingers and roughly chop the meat.

While the chicken is cooling, chop up the garnishes. I used celery, green onion and cilantro:
There are many things you can add to chicken salad. Since this is a curry chicken salad, cashew nuts might be nice for some texture. Some people like fruit in their chicken salad. I personally think it's disgusting. However, if you insist, diced apples would be appropriate.

Just mix things to your liking. Some mayo, some celery, green onions, cilantro...just mix it up to your taste. Also add some lemon juice, Tabasco sauce or cayenne. Kinda looks gross. Not the most attractive thing.

George found the chicken salad heavily underseasoned. Bastard. This is the thanks I get for working hard and putting food on the table. Not to mention the endless dishes I washed.

Time- Mayo- 20 minutes. Chicken salad- An hour but 45 is chicken simmering time.

Food cost- Cheap. 2.5 bucks in chicken, 50 cents in celery, 45 cents in green onions, 10 cents in cilantro. Probably about 80 cents per serving.

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Lolcat!

Random Stuff

More random junk in this post.

Last night, a friend treated me to dinner at Nopa. I had a revelatory experience. You see, back home in Alaska, we used to go fishing for smelt. Smelt are these little fish generally no longer than a couple of inches. We used to drive down a bit past Anchorage and cruise the Turnagain Arm...from the shore, you can dip a net into the water and, depending on the season, end up with a net full of smelt!

Anyways, we used to bring them home and my mom would fry them...because the fish are so small, you can eat every part of them...bones, fins, head...all edible. I used to detest fried smelt but, last night at Nopa, I ordered a plate of the fried smelt. I don't know what pushed me in this direction because the rest of the menu reads well. Maybe my mother's illness led me to reach for a taste of my childhood...Whatever it was, those little fried fish at Nopa are ASTOUNDINGLY GOOD. I could eat plates of them. I seriously believe that if I ever go back, I will order multiple plates of those fish. At Nopa, they serve the fish with a lemon-dill aioli and fennel. I am a smelt convert.

In addition to the smelt revelation, I had a terrific sandwich at the local Irish bakery. It was a corned beef and cabbage sandwich...layers of buttery, stewed cabbage, thinly sliced corned beef and...this is key....the pickling spices from the beef were incorporated into the sandwich. Every bite tasted a bit different because you would get different spices in different proportions. Top this off with crusty bread which was soft and soaked through with the corned beef juices...soooooooooo good. Let's hope the bakery is still around next St. Patrick's Day so I can get another one of these sandwiches! In general, the bakery is pretty good...I like the soda bread and brown bread...scones, less so. I find something about them slightly odd. Their savories are pretty good. Get a sausage roll if you're hungry and don't have much money....those things will sit in your stomach like a lump of wet cement.

No update on my mom. She had more tests on Monday but she hasn't yet received the results. And speaking of which, I think I'm gonna give her a call right now...adios!

Ughhh

Earlier today, my mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor. With any luck, it's benign and won't be a problem. :-(

What's the secular version of "Send up a few prayers for her?" Send her your best wishes? Whatever it is, please do it. Thanks.

Pear Clafouti with Star Anise

So my roommate hired a maid to come over and clean our apartment. Friggin' amazing. Our apartment is sooooo clean. I've never been more appreciative of Latin America's hard working people than I am right now. And yes, I wondered if they were illegal immigrants. Does that make me racist? Living in California, I've heard so much about illegal immigration that I couldn't help but wonder. Anyhow, I'll enjoy the fruits of their labor. A drop of coffee spilled on the counter earlier this morning and I immediately wiped it up. When the cleaners come back next week, they will say, "Aye amigo, ess so cleeen in here!" Wait...I'm pretty sure THAT was racist. Sorry.

This is my baking post for the week. As I understand it, clafouti is something along the lines of a French farmhouse dessert. Something very simple that grandmas make due to the availability of the principal ingredients. Sugar, cream, eggs, flour, who doesn't have this stuff? I am using the recipe out of Jean-Georges:Cooking at home with a Four-Star Chef and I believe that, in the past, I've espoused the purchase of this book. My opinion of it has not changed. Go buy it.


The stuff you'll need. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. That's right, I specify Fahrenheit because I have readers from all over the globe...wouldn't want people thinking it was 350 Celsius (662 Fahrenheit) and burning their kitchens down.

Grind up 3 star anise. This is what star anise looks like. It smells like licorice. Add 3 eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla extract to a mixing bowl and beat. I now have an electric mixer. It is wonderful. Add 1/2 cup of sugar and beat until "foamy and fairly thick." Add 6 tablespoons of flour and beat until "thick and smooth." Add 3/4 cup of cream, the powdered star anise and a few pinches of salt. Mix in and let the batter rest. This is what mine looked like: Prepare the pans. The recipe calls for a 10 inch round pie pan. I used a 7.75 inch pie pan and (stupidly) wondered why I had leftover batter. In addition to the 7.75 inch pie pan, I used a 8x8 square baking dish. To prepare the pans, butter them up, throw in a bit of flour and rotate the pans so the flour has a chance to adhere to the buttered surface. Shake out any excess flour. Prepare the fruit. Peel the pears and slice the into eighths. Cut out the cores. Arrange the pears in your baking dishes. I think I used a total of three pears.Cover the baking dishes with the batter. The book recommends "leaving just a little of the tops of the pears peeking through."Chuck the clafouti into the oven. Recipe says 20 minutes or until "the clafouti is nicely browned on top and a knife inserted into it comes out clean." I have an issue here. It took me 40 minutes to achieve the desired results. And I'm not the only one...every online recipe for clafouti that I looked at called for cooking times WELL over 20 minutes. Most were somewhere between 30-45 minutes. My point is, whoever wrote "20 minutes" in the cookbook was on crack. It is absolutely incorrect.

Here is your reward:
Allow to cool, sift some powdered sugar over the tops and you've got a tasty breakfast!
Time- About an hour, total. Most of this is inactive while the clafouti bakes.

Food Cost- Ummm, pretty damn cheap...about $2.50 total. It's really quite cheap.

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Lolcat:

Adios!